Designing UI elements

I always believe in the power of sketching and using mind maps as a technique to show the relationship between different elements and information. I decided to try out this approach on some of my projects. I first saw this from a fairly old video on Caler Edwards' channel on YoutTube. However, I modified my version based on how I felt it would work out for my projects.

Tools/Software/Language

Pen and Paper

Activities

Sketching, Mind Mapping

About the process

I did not start using mind maps as a deliberate approach in being able to create better products, but it is a result of my subconscious way of note-taking and synthesizing information. However, it has now become a non-linear and effective technique, which is a crucial part of my process. I began by writing out the central idea/product that I wanted to build in the middle of my sheet and then sketching out sub-areas, made up of product components, elements, and critical features. Some of the specific sub-areas on the mind map were the product colors and their rationale, icons, and screens.

Lessons learned and future Use

So far, I can say there have been more positive learnings for me using this process. With this, I can now get a more precise picture of things before actually investing a lot of time and resources in creating. This is not to say that failures aren't acceptable in design, it is totally a crucial part of the process, but sometimes, it is always better for failures to happen when it is less expensive and still resides in the paper. For the future, I plan to explore it in much more in-depth and use it more often and hope to identify the possibility of introducing more elements to make it serve somewhat as a blueprint for other team members. Also, I will like to try it out on other non-design related projects.